Hawaii enacts Paris Climate Accord legislation

Only weeks after President Trump announced that his administration would be pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord (PCA), Hawaii has taken matters into its own hands by enacting PCA legislation to reduce emissions.

Governor David Ige argued that Hawaii was particularly aware of and vulnerable to climate change as an island state, and that it wouldn’t sit idly by as the President backs away from the PCA.

The first piece of legislation aims to reduce Hawaii’s overall emissions with a raft broad-ranging state-based policies. The second focuses on soils and carbon sequestration with the establishment of a Carbon Farming Task Force. The task force will identify opportunities for soil improvement in agriculture and better aquaculture practices to reduce emissions and sequester carbon.

The governor has called on all states to follow suit in supporting the Paris Accord without the President’s support and has already received pledges from several other states and cities. Large companies like Amazon, Google and Apple have also pledged to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Accord.